Summoned by Monster Girls

We spent around an hour talking before Rieka made her farewells and escaped once more. Kassandra had spent most of the hour either teasing her friend or doing what she could to press us closer together. The entire time she also continued to keep me at attention underneath her firm butt.

As soon as Rieka had made her escape though, Kassandra had proceeded to pick up where we’d been before being interrupted. She worked to ensure that I had no hard feelings left before falling asleep on top of me in a sprawl of coils on top of her bed.

I fell asleep as well, pinned by the loving weight of my dwarf lamia. I only woke up when the mana for the summon ran out and I was returned home.

Since I hadn’t bothered to get dressed before falling asleep, I was entirely naked when I arrived back. Thankfully, I’d been in my apartment before getting summoned, so it wasn’t as awkward as it might have been in the past.

I hadn’t set an alarm for the past week, wanting to rest as much as possible. However, my body had still managed to get me up at the same time I usually did without it. Work had enforced a habit on my system that would take longer than a week to break it seemed.

Apparently all I’d needed was Kassandra to wear me out enough that I would have slept in. However, I had set an alarm to make sure I was up and ready for the girls and the alarm woke me from a deep sleep.

Making sure that I was showered and ready, I was in the middle of considering if I had time for breakfast when the notification I’d been waiting for the whole week arrived.

Kassandra Silverscale and Rieka Coldeye have sent a non-urgent request for your presence regarding an extended protection contract.

Transit? View summoning?

Slamming the refrigerator closed, I made sure my cell phone was on the counter and plugged into its charger. I’d updated my message on it to say I was camping and out of cell service, just in case Jameson called me. WIth that confirmed, I selected ‘Transit’.

As the world swirled away from me, I realized that it had been some time since I’d bothered using the ‘View Summoning’ option. I always just went whenever the girls called me. I had to wonder if I would come to regret doing that.

No. As long as I take half a moment to look when it’s an urgent summon, I think I’ll be fine. Need to see what situation I’m landing in then. I thought while reality and chaos ripped past me.

For half of a moment, I saw a jungle clearing full of strange plants and massive, simian creatures with distended shoulders and tiny legs. Before I could really focus on them, I was pulled onwards and back into the maelstrom of colors.

Landing in the grass, I quickly checked my surroundings to confirm my exact location.

I was standing near the curtain wall of the Juneau campus, on the inside edge of the wall. I could see the stone shapes of the dorm buildings a short distance away and the path that led from there to the gate in the wall ran right beside me. Above me, I could hear the quiet clank of the guards walking back and forth on top of the wall. The sun was just beginning to rise high enough to paint the land in light and color, staining the sky a brilliant pink and soft orange while digging shadows out of the cracks of the wall and from behind the blades of grass underfoot.

Kassandra and Rieka were waiting for me in the shadow of the wall. For the first time in a long time, Kassandra didn’t throw herself at me in greeting.

Instead, she just slithered over and proceeded to wrap her serpentine coils around me while trying to burrow under my shirt.

Kassandra was dressed in her normal skirt, blouse, and corset combination. This time the skirt was a charcoal color while her top was a soft gray under the faun of her corset. She even had a short half-cape wrapped around her shoulders for warmth, though that didn’t do anything to help her hands, unfortunately for me.

“Cooooold. Liam, warm me up?” Kassandra begged in a petulant tone. Her hands felt like little blocks of ice as she pressed them to my chest. I had to bite back the urge to yelp in surprise.

Gathering the cold-blooded woman closer, I let her snuggle into me while the muscles of her lower half gently squeezed me in a warm, rhythmic hug.

“Good morning, Liam,” Rieka murmured quietly, following after her friend with a roll of her eyes. Kassandra made some quiet, grumbly noises before burying her face in my neck further. Her mass of red curls covered my face and I had to spit a few out before I could respond to Rieka’s greeting.

“I guess she’s colder than normal right now?” I asked.

“Sort of. I think she’s playing it up some. Apparently, she didn’t get enough sleep last night because she’d spent all her energy on a distraction,” Rieka teased. She reached out and pinched Kassandra’s bum lightly, making the dwarf lamia jump with an ‘eep’ noise.

“In her defense, I am at least partially to blame for that.” I laughed, shifting my grip to better support my serpentine lover.

“I don’t blame you. She’s the one who chose to summon you the night before our trip.” Rieka grinned up at me, her black-tipped, white-furred ears flicking merrily while her fluffy tail, also with a darkened tip, stirred lightly.

Rieka was dressed in a pale-blue blouse that sat open at the neck for once, she had forgone her usual ribbon at the throat, and light-gray riding pants tucked into tall boots. Rieka also wore a cloak of dark-blue fabric at her shoulders that hung down over her pack and fell to her knees.

Both Rieka and Kassandra still wore their smaller ‘day packs’ on their back, which I remembered had things like medical supplies and basic items they might need regularly. They also had their customary spell-rod’s in holsters at their hips and pouches of various things they might need on their belts. Kassandra had her knife on her belt, while Rieka’s bow was strapped to her day pack.

“Stop picking on me…,” whined Kassandra petulantly. She twisted in her snuggle to glare under my chin at Rieka. The fourth princess responded maturely with a quiet raspberry that sent both of them off in giggles.

“Are we ready to head out?” I asked once the giggles had calmed some.

“Yes. Just need to stop in town to pick up perishables. I got everything else secured during the week,” Rieka said. The wolf-eared woman patted the large, leather, messenger-pouch on her hip with a smile.

“And my armor?” I asked, gently scratching the top of Kassandra’s spine with the hand I slipped under her cloak. The gesture made her groan happily and snuggle against me more firmly.

“In here. I was just waiting for the cuddle monster to release you,” Rieka laughed and pointed to the pouch again. “Since you’ve never experienced a dimensional container before, I wanted to give you a chance to fish it out and see what they were like.”

“Fiiine. Go diving into Rieka’s bag. But I want hot cider when we get to town,” Kassandra groused before releasing her coils and delicately lowering herself to the ground once more. She made a big show of shivering and rubbing her arms like she was extremely cold already, which was amusing given the relative warmth of the morning as far as I could detect.

“I hope ‘purse rules’ don’t apply.” I muttered when Rieka held the large, flat pouch to me and flipped the top open. I was still surprised at how much it looked like a laptop bag or courier pouch. The magical object even hung flat, like it was empty.

“Purse rules?” Rieka asked in confusion, one ear falling down while the other standing upright in confusion.

“A thing from back home. Some men swear that women booby-trap their purses or have some kind of eldritch spell on them to contain everything they have stored inside. I know several guys who absolutely refuse to delve into their girlfriend’s purses, even with permission.” I explained while bending to look into the pouch.

This move put me close enough to Rieka that I could smell the sweet, herbal scent of her soap and the faintest hint of ozone from the spell rod at her side.

My mind drifted over the idea of burying my face in her soft hair for a moment to try and track down exactly what herbs were giving it that sweet scent, but I stopped myself. Shaking off the distraction of the smell, I caught a small smirk from Rieka at my explanation before looking into the pouch.

The view actually gave me a bit of vertigo. The opening of the pouch was barely eighteen inches across and fell open about six inches naturally, but I swore I was looking down on the bed of a large trailer that was about two feet deep by nine long and around five across. The ‘trailer-bed’ was barely a fourth full with a collection of camping supplies and other necessities.

The girls had included far more clothes than before, as well as a stack of nicer pillows and more bedding. I could see the tent rolled up and stuffed into a cauldron that I bet was for bathing in one corner of the storage space. A wooden crate beside the cauldron was full of books, paper, ink, quills, and charcoal sticks for writing while I spotted several more quivers of arrows for Rieka’s bow in the mix. Any area that wasn’t covered by items had the look of the interior of a cedar chest that had been lined in soft leather. My armor and the mace were set to one side in the open space of the storage object and I reached in to fish them out.

To my view, it felt like I had to reach down a good four feet to get to what I was after. But as soon as my hand dipped into the pouch, I saw it stretch and it took only a moment to grip the leather shoulder of my armor. Pulling the armor out of the mouth of the bag was also bizarre. The bundle of leather and metal was larger than the opening, but it slid through into open air without a problem.

“How did it fit through that?” I asked, staring at the bundle of armor.

“Knew it! Drinks are on you then, Rieka,” Kassandra crowed while Rieka huffed in annoyance.

“What?” I blinked at the two of them in surprise while the formerly slow and shivering Kassandra wiggled happily back and forth, celebrating with plenty of energy now.

“We bet on what your first question would be in regards to the pouch. I bet that you would ask about the weight. Kass bet that you would want to know how things fit inside. Though her phrasing was a bit cruder.” Rieka sighed before stuffing her arm in and extracting my mace and belt.

“I would assume the weight would have been reduced, if not negligible, given that you are acting as if it weighs nothing,” I said. Shifting, I threw the armored jacket over my shoulders and worked to get into it and secure the buckles. The front where I’d been hit with the wolf’s fire-breath was still discolored, but someone had re-dyed it to make it more of a match to the rest of the armor. The damaged spot was supple once more as well. “Is there an issue with the weight?” I addressed the last question towards the pouch on Rieka’s hip.

“No. Your assumption is correct,” Kassandra interjected. “The contents of the pouch are reduced to a bare fraction of their actual weight. We could probably fill it with boulders and it wouldn’t weigh more than twenty pounds. The volume would become an issue before the weight would.”

“And, to answer your first question, the mouth of the pouch is able to contort reality to engulf objects roughly two to three times the size of the opening. It only works as long as you can get part of it inside the pouch,” Rieka explained. The wolf-eared woman’s irritation had already passed. Instead, she was smiling as she talked, and her tail wagged happily.

“That is really cool. I’m glad that we don’t have to worry about carrying the heavy packs again. I think we can make better time this way for sure,” I said while doing up a buckle on the inside of the armor.

Kassandra helped me with the last of my armor ties before Rieka tossed me the weapon-belt. Getting that secured, I rolled my shoulders to ensure that I was able to move well. It would take a bit of work in the armor to adjust to its weight, but I was confident I’d be able to wield my new tricks without an issue.

“Rieka. Do you want to do the honors or shall I?” Kassandra asked while I was stretching.

“Hmm. You can do the honors this time and I’ll see what I can come up with to wiggle extra for him. Since you did that duty last time,” Rieka replied.

Their bit of banter confused me for a moment before Kassandra’s next sentence removed that confusion quite deftly. When she used my full name, it made me blink in surprise.

“Liam Cosgrave. We are heading out on an extended series of collection and hunting missions. We need you to protect and look after the two of us for the next nine days while we are gone.” Kassandra recited formally, though her eyes flickered with mischief the entire time.

A moment later there was a purple flare around the edges of my vision that outlined my mission.

Assist your contracted companions, Kassandra Silverscale and Rieka Coldeye, with their work for the next nine days. See to their needs and return them safely home.

Reward - 3100 SP

I couldn’t suppress the surprised whistle at the payment, which told the girls their attempt had been successful and both grinned broadly in response. I couldn’t help but do the mental calculations based on the going rate in the Exchange for that.

Rate was sitting at $10.03 per point earlier. Round it to ten for easy math…thirty-one thousand dollars for a week's worth of work. That would definitely allow for rent to be paid without an issue for quite a while. That’s also enough to easily pick up Shape-Shifting (Mass Control) as well as finally pump my stats up. Something to consider.

Kassandra clearing her throat drew my attention back to my lover. She gestured to Rieka, who began to speak next.

“Liam Cosgrave. In addition to your duties of protection, I want to interview you for a report I am writing on humans to help Juneau understand them better. Besides that, Kassandra would like you to help her in inspecting the ruins we discovered before and interpreting what we find there.” Again, the use of my full name made it feel more…official somehow.

There was a long pause after Rieka finished and then another flare of color. This time the light was a hot pink, rather than the iridescent violet, and two messages appeared.

Assist your contracted companion, Rieka Coldeye, with her research on humans for her report.

Reward - 400 SP

Assist your contracted companion, Kassandra Silverscale, with infiltrating and examining the ruins.

Reward - 400 SP and ???.

“That’s…new?”

<><><>

Before we headed to town, I filled the girls in on what the System had sent me for assignments. The fact that the three missions for this weekend would nearly double the amount of SP I’d earned so far was not something to sniff at, but I was also super curious what the mystery reward was that was included in the last one. Cariad had never mentioned anything like that popping up, so either it was going to be something super rare, or something not worth mentioning.

Kassandra spent most of the trip to Kintos trying to guess what that mystery item could be. Everything from suggestions of explicit favors to a new carriage bounced back and forth from the dwarf lamia’s cute mouth while her energy put paid to the lie that she was chilled from earlier. It had clearly been a ploy to try and cadge more snuggles from me, though it wasn’t as if I was resistant to the idea of giving them.

When we left Juneau on our way to Kintos, I checked over my shoulder with my eyesight already enhanced to see if anyone was watching us from the inner window that I’d seen movement at previously.

There was no sign of any watchers, but it was also earlier than we’d gone out last time. Still, I was wary after the events of the last few missions we’d gone on, especially the bandits planning kidnap. So I talked the girls into taking a bit of a circuitous route in order to try and avoid any watching eyes before we headed away from settled lands.

Once we had the supplies in town and Kassandra had several mugs of hot cider, we exited from the gate opposite the one we wanted before cutting into the fields and circling back around Kintos. It added an extra hour to the walk, but we had time and it quieted the creeping feeling of being watched that I’d had since we left Juneau.

The dimensional pouch that Rieka was carrying proved to be a huge boon, since it allowed us to store up more than enough simple food as well as a few treats for the trip. The girls also explained that it functioned to slow time inside of it, so any animals we collected while out hunting could simply be stored in the pouch for proper processing when we returned to town.

The girls discussed the slew of missions that they had picked up over the course of the week for this specifically. Most of them were collection quests for various herbs, mushrooms, and tree-fruits. Another order for vine-ray quills had been snagged as well and a request for a stone bear hide. There were several other standing orders for things that Rieka had memorized but not taken. Things like boulder rabbit hides or spring fox pelts.

The only one we were uncertain about was the stone bear hide, as all of the other creatures or plants had been seen while we’d been up at the campsite near the ruins. The crag hunter would have likely driven all other predators away, but it had been a few weeks and it was possible something else had moved in. The mountains were apparently rife with stone bears, so Rieka had judged it a worthwhile risk to claim that mission.

Kassandra did her best to evoke another System mission for me as well. She tapped into her previous idea of ‘keeping her warm while away from her nest’, but nothing triggered.

I assumed it would fall under the ‘see to their needs’ precept from the main mission, but she wanted to try anyway. Kassandra also tried to get it to give me a mission to bathe her, and then tried it for Rieka, but to no avail. From there it got more ridiculous, from amusing and entertaining them to pampering her with a scale-scrub.

As I had expected, without the heavy packs we made better time. Our party reached the turnoff only an hour after breaking for lunch, despite the delay. There were no ruumo in the sky this time, which was a little disappointing. Seeing the airborne whale was one of the biggest reminders to date that I was not on Earth anymore.

Though, if I need a reminder, I can just look at the girls. I thought with a smile as we followed the winding stream up into the hills.

Kassandra had been her exuberant and affectionate self the whole trip, racing ahead slightly before falling back to us and talking a mile a minute. Rieka, on the other hand, had stuck close to me and we had talked quietly over the plans for the trip several times.

I could tell Rieka was nervous, not only with the amount of time we were going to be away from town but also with the potential of breaching those ruins. The other missions we’d picked up were just in case we got nothing out of the ruins to make the trip worth it. The big goal here was inspecting the cave and the door to see what we might learn from them, as well as what might be valuable inside.

The conversation topics varied, between classwork and what their classmates were up to, but Rieka would always wind back to the trip itself. The most awkward part was when Rieka mentioned how happy she was that my employer had agreed to give me the time off and I’d winced. I thought I’d concealed the motion well, but she had caught it and pursued the reaction for more information.

“Liam, what is wrong?” Rieka demanded.

“Ah…well…,” I hedged for a moment before sighing. I’d never been good at lying and I really didn’t want to lie to either of the girls. I only hesitated because I didn’t want them to think less of me, but I knew that was silly. “I quit my job actually.”

“What?!” both girls chorused in surprise. They came to a stop on the bank of the river that led up to the lake where we had camped before.

“Why did you do that, Liam?” Rieka demanded, her gaze intent.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Kassandra whined, her mind clearly on missed ‘cuddle time’.

“I quit because I was tired of the abuse from my boss. He tried to play power games by denying my time-off request when he had no authority to. Also, he has been verbally harassing me for a year or more. I’d stuck it out this long because…well because I lacked self-confidence.” I rubbed at my forehead and stuffed the swell of anger over the whole situation back down again before I continued. “Ever since meeting you two and starting to exercise my new powers that lack of confidence has been changing. It came to a head at the beginning of the week.” I sighed explosively before glancing between the two of them. “I know that this might mess things up a bit in the future, but I will still always respond when you two summon me. We just might need to plan things a bit more finely is all.”

Kassandra and Rieka exchanged a look that went right over my head before both of them stepped up and wrapped their arms around me in a tight hug on two separate levels of height.

Rieka’s arms went around my chest and she buried her face in my shoulder while Kassandra wrapped her arms around my waist and nuzzled into my abdomen.

I wrapped my arms around both of them in return. The one around Rieka stroked the back of her head and the base of her ears, while the one on Kassandra rubbed her back in slow circles. Deep inside, an urge to be embarrassed tried to rise but the warm comfort of the contact caused that sensation to deflate before it ever reached the surface.

Neither girl spoke, instead just giving me a tight hug that helped to sooth the ball of worry that had formed in my gut while I was explaining what happened.

“Good.” Rieka was the first to speak and I looked down to find the icy-blue eyes of my kin companion watching me softly. My expression must have conveyed a question because she continued to speak almost immediately. “From what you told us of that job, it was a bad place and was costing you far more than you were being paid.”

“Agreed!” Kassandra interjected sharply. She twisted to look up at me as well with her slitted, brown eyes from behind the silver frames of the delicate spectacles she wore. “It really is too bad we can’t afford to bring you here on a more permanent basis, Liam. The amount of mana to do that would be staggering though…” Kassandra let the sentence trail off thoughtfully and her gaze grew distant.

“What?” I asked, feeling a bit of a chill run down my spine.

Normally, when Kassandra got that thoughtful look on her face, she either ended up embarrassing the hell out of one of us or causing absolute havoc.

Rieka shifted to look down at her friend as well, the motion causing the softness of her ears to brush my face. Out of instinct, I pressed a light kiss to the tip of one which made Rieka jump in surprise and look back up at me with wide eyes.

I was saved from having to explain when Kassandra spoke again.

“I was just thinking about how we might make something like that work. It wouldn’t be quick though. Liam, you are okay for now though, right? You mentioned you rent your home?”

“Yes. I have the funds for at least the next month or two in my current place. Cari and Cerebaton told me how to exchange the points I earn working for you girls for cash if I need to, but recommended against it. I’m hoping I unlock the power to bring things back and forth so I can somehow work the market. That way, being summoned by you girls can be my full-time job.” I smiled down at the two of them and got two bright smiles back in return.

“I can see why they’d be against that. You wouldn’t be able to use them to grow stronger then.” Rieka commented softly. I just shrugged lightly and continued to smile down at them.

“Worst comes to worst, I can get another job back home. But that is a problem for the future. I’ll start worrying about it when I get back from this mission. For now, we should focus on getting camp set up and planning out the coming week. Okay?”

Both girls nodded and gave me another squeeze before separating once more. Kassandra muttered something about ‘having an idea to explore’ that she needed to think on as she peeled herself off of me.

There was only another half-hour of walking at most to get to the chosen campsite and Kassandra led the charge along the river with Rieka falling in beside me while we hiked into the foothills.

Due to her proximity, Rieka’s tail would occasionally brush against the back of my legs as it wagged back and forth. I wouldn’t have noticed it if it wasn’t for the fact that the bottom half of my armor only fell to mid-thigh and I was only wearing jeans under it. Each time it would bat against me, I’d glance over to check on her and Rieka would blush slightly and look away. Despite her shy expression, her ears were always upright and she would steal glances at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. The generally affectionate vibe she was giving reminded me of the kisses we’d shared previously and I really hoped I wasn’t reading into the situation too much.

I silently resolved to talk to Kassandra. She’d expressed it before but I wanted to confirm it one last time before I responded to Rieka’s clumsy flirting or not. I really wanted to, but I also respected Rieka too much to lead her on. It was just so cute to have the alternatively shy and brash wolf-woman flirting with me that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

A direct answer from Kassandra would lay the last of my concerns on this to rest. I would talk to the perky redhead at the next opportunity.